Greece Has Too Many Farmers

Southern Europe has a productivity problem. Workers in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy all produce below the euro-zone average per hour worked; the difference is particularly stark for Greece and Portugal, two of the countries getting loans from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund.

Why? You frequently hear baseless speculation that southern Europeans don’t work as “hard” as their northern counterparts, whatever that means.

One explanation actually supported by the data is that southern Europeans are more likely to work on farms, and agriculture is a low-productivity (yet very-hard-work) sector.